AppsForBharat: Building India's Largest Spiritual-Tech Platform | Day One | Elevation Capital

"Can we be the happiness and wellness reinforcement provider to an entire nation?"
That's the bold vision Prashant Sachan is bringing to life with AppsForBharat. He passionately believes in building a foundation of trust, especially critical in the devotion space, ensuring that every aspect of AppsForBharat enriches, rather than exploits, the spiritual journeys of its users.
This thoughtful approach to product building underpins the culture of AppsForBharat, which today has more than 3 million people turning to its Sri Mandir app to fulfill their spiritual and devotional needs every month. Prashant advises that if a product isn't receiving sharp user love, it's crucial to keep iterating and changing until it does - a philosophy evidenced by the unparalleled customer love for Sri Mandir.
We are delighted to bring you an illuminating conversation between Amit Aggarwal (Principal, Elevation Capital) and Prashant, where they deep dive into the early days of AppsForBharat. They discuss the acute need to provide reliable digital resources and access to services to enable devotion as a behaviour to move online.
In this episode, you will gain insights on:
1. Market gap that sparked the idea for AFB
2. How Prashant’s personal experiences influenced the company’s mission
3. Serving different user personas in the devotion space
4. First signs of PMF
5. Journey to monetization
6. When should founders raise capital
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Chapters:
00:00 Coming Up.
01:00 Intro.
02:00 How did AppsForBharat start?
05:41 What does a typical Indian family look like?
06:30 'I started exploring devotion'
07:32 AppsForBharat's daily impact in life.
08:08 User personas
10:44 Sri Mandir: Enabler for devotion.
12:50 '30% of users are small business owners'
14:34 What was the scope of opportunity for AFB?
19:18 Roughly 300M people pray daily.
20:28 Elevation Capital's AFB partnership decision.
24:58 First principles partnership approach by Elevation.
26:30 Figuring out the engagement loops.
27:14 What were the signs of early PMF?
31:20 User reviews matter.
33:14 Acquiring its first set of users?
34:34 Scaling Strategy: Second phase approach.
37:08 Prashant's user-centric cultural approach.
39:36 Team building & culture at work.
43:42 People find their purpose eventually.
45:46 Roughly 3M people use the app every month.
48:10 Evolution of AppsForBharat's DNA.
50:22 Revenue and monetization metrics.
52:52 Learnings & takeaways for budding entrepreneurs.
58:54 How to approach the capital journey?
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